> A chair doesn't really exist, it's just a collection of atoms If a particular arrangement of the atoms doesn't make a chair a chair, only its use determines

> A chair doesn't really exist, it's just a collection of atoms If a particular arrangement of the atoms doesn't make a chair a chair, only its use determines identity, then are you also a chair if someone decides to use you that way? If to be a chair is to be "just a collection of atoms arranged in a way that [we] can sit on it", then what is a human being? Are you also not nothing but an collection of atoms? What makes you different from the aggregate of atoms you call a chair? How can both you and I share humanity? Is this a matter of convention? Why this convention? And if usefulness is again the criterion, toward what end? If I can burn a chair in my furnace, why not you? You're both just collections of atoms, aren't you? Is your mind just a collection of atoms? If so, how can it entertain these notions, like models or patterns or usefulness or meaningfulness, that are not just collections of atoms? What are atoms? Are they also collections of atoms? How did you, a collection of atoms, come to know that atoms exist, that everything is just collection of atoms? And how is it that you know everything is just a collection of atoms, but the existence of anything else is a matter of "models" or convention? And why are atoms privileged in this way? [0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/04/nothing-but.html https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/04/nothing-but.html [1] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2023/10/cartwright-on-reductionism-in-science.html https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2023/10/cartwright-on-reduc...